Library - Reading Room
Supporting Materials for Sir! No Sir!
We’ve Got The Power
What would happen if nobody showed up for inspection or a G.I. Party or an open ranks? What can a few officers do to thousands of rank and file G.I.’s if they simply refused to obey their banal orders. Threaten them with another inspection? Threaten to put them in jail? When was the last time an officer had an entire squadron put in jail? It’s never happened–– for two reasons. One is that the squadron cannot fulfill its mission when they’re in jail. Secondly, the maze of legal entanglements involved in trying a whole squadron would have the JAG running around in circles.
The point I’m trying to make is that although officers can sound impressive at times, therte’s very little in reality they can do. The only thing they can do is to continue, through devious and usually not very subtle tactics, to keep G.I.’s from becoming aware of the most ominous truth of the military––that the brass has that power and only that power which the G.I.’s grant to them. WE’VE GOT ALL THE POWER. We’ve got the gu[ns] and we’ve got the numbers. ALL WE HAVE TO DO IS GET TOGETHER AND STAY TOGETHER––otherwise we’ll all go on, following the dollar sign wherever it leads us.
So the next time a lifer tells you that your barracks isn’t clean enough for you to live in, why doin’t you collectively tell him to do it himself.
In future issues of this paper, we will explain how petty harassment at the squadron level relates to our Kill For Peace (and General Motors, and Standard Oil, Chase Manhattan, etc.) policy.
Broken Arrow, no. 2